Claire, happily without Don, cracks open one of his cans of Miller, and drinks it down—so light, so cold—in less than a minute. She does not like to think about her parents at all, and when she does, she drinks. After the beer is gone, she opens a bottle of wine, a peppery Zinfandel she buys by the case from the grocery downtown, and suddenly it all feels oddly celebratory. It feels like something she wouldn’t have done had Don stayed home, slamming a beer and then opening some wine. She’d have done the chores, put away the schlepped bags from the pool outing. She’d have done the dinner prep, and the bedtime baths and showers, before allowing herself a drink. Wine in hand, she goes downstairs to check on the kids in the basement rec room, watching a stupid movie they probably shouldn’t be watching. Nothing terrible, she notes, and what harm does it do, really, to let them watch the movie, a high school special on the Disney Channel with smart-ass teasing of teachers and heavily veiled sexual innuendos between students.
